Chapter 24
Maryland, May 1726
Bess climbed into the high two-wheeled dog cart and took the leathers in one hand. With a flick of the reins and a loud click, she urged the dapple-gray hackney into a swift trot down the curved front lane of Fortune’s Gift. The baby kicked Bess hard and she laughed as she caressed her swollen abdomen with her free hand. “Soon, little one,” she murmured. “Soon you’ll be born, and out in all this big, bright world.”
Bess smiled with satisfaction as she looked at the wide field of tobacco spreading down to the river on her right. The fragile plants were green and upright, promising to make the best leaf crop she’d ever had. On the other side of the lane marched tall rows of Indian corn.
The showy gelding’s slim legs moved gracefully in long, low strides. The high red wheels spun merrily as the fancy yellow gig fairly flew over the hard-packed road. It was a sparkling late spring day—one which promised a warm afternoon and lengthening sunlight for the burgeoning crops—and Bess was still seeing the beauty of the Eastern Shore with an almost hushed reverence.
The winter voyage home to Maryland from Jamaica had been uneventful and swift. And with the treasure the Scarlet Tanager had carried, Bess had been able to clear her debts with Myers and Son, and purchase supplies to rebuild all that had been destroyed by the marauders’ attack. Even after she had divided the gold with Kincaid, there was still enough to assure Fortune’s Gift’s future for a long time to come.
As the road ran down to the water, it split into two paths. One led to her dock, where the Tanager and two smaller boats were anchored; the other, to the pastureland and, beyond that, the edge of the virgin forest Kincaid was clearing for new tobacco fields. Bess reined in the dapple-gray just enough to keep from overturning the cart and headed left onto the woods trail.
She glanced at the brownish-green surface of the river, edged by thin strips of buff and, interspaced with clumps of cattails and ferns. A great blue heron tucked in his wings, stretched out his long neck, and drifted down to perch on cranelike yellowish legs in the shallows. Farther out in the current a rusty-headed canvasback bobbed, tail up, then vanished beneath the water. And just to the left of the dirt lane, a red-winged blackbird swayed on a willow branch and scolded the passing horse and cart with a sharp chek-tee-err.
Bess smiled and called, “Good morning to you too.” Not even Reverend Thomas’s unexpected visit just after breakfast had been able to ruin her lighthearted mood. She’d given the disapproving cleric twenty minutes to tell her that her behavior was a disgrace and that people were talking, offered him breakfast, and made her escape in the dog cart.
She had cared not a fig for neighbors’ gossip, that she—large with child—was still an unmarried woman. Kincaid had tried to force her to wed him on the ship once it had become evident that she was telling the truth about being in the family way. But she’d refused.
“When I marry, I marry for life,” she’d informed him. “Since you have no intention of staying on Fortune’s Gift with me, then I have no intention of becoming your wife and making myself subject to a man who will be conspicuous by his absence.”
“Ye canna make our babe a bastard!” he’d threatened.
“Why not? It never killed you,” she’d replied.
Their relationship had been stormy after that. Kincaid had insisted that he was leaving once she was safely home—but it had been three months, and he was still here. Bess chuckled to herself. First it had been the tobacco seedlings . . .
“I’ll nay go until the seeds have sprouted in the woodlots,” Kincaid had proclaimed sternly. “If they are not tended carefully, you’ll lose them all.”
“I’m capable of overseeing the seedlings,” she’d retorted. “Who do you think did it last year?”
“Last year ye were nay a woman with a swelling belly.”
A rabbit darted across the pathway, but the dapple-gray horse never missed a stride. Bess was glad she’d brought the cart this morning and not dragged herself up into the saddle. Riding astride was definitely more difficult with a great bulge in front of you, and Velvet, the mare she usually rode, had an aversion to rabbits. If she’d ridden Velvet, she might have been rudely dumped on her bottom.
Let’s see, she thought, returning to the subject of Kincaid. After the seedlings were safely up and transplanted, then it was the dock that needed rebuilding, and then the barns. After that. . .
“I’ll see your corn crop in, and then I’m going. There’s nay use to argue with me, Bess. I’ve made up my mind,” he’d said in that deep burr that never failed to make delicious shivers run up arid down her spine. “I’ve my own future to consider, and it’s growing late for me to think of spring planting on my own land.”
There was no denying that having Kincaid to direct the farm workers and the lumbermen was a great relief. The grumbling from the bond servants had lasted just long enough for Kincaid to knock the first troublemaker head over heels. After that, whatever the inhabitants of Fortune’s Gift might think about Kincaid’s dubious past, they gained respect for him with every passing day. When Kincaid gave an order, men and women jumped to obey.
And he worked as hard and long as any field hand on the plantation. From early dawn until dusk, he rode the fields, carried fence rails, chopped wood, and hoed tobacco seedlings. Bess usually saw him only at the light meal in the late evening, when they sat down together in the great hall. By then, he’d washed the dust from his body and hair, tied his golden hair back in a damp queue, shaved, and changed into a gentleman’s shirt, waistcoat, and breeches.
And for a brief few hours, Bess was able to pretend that they were man and wife. They rarely argued anymore. He was too excited about the day’s progress and the plans for expanding the southern fields. They laughed and talked together like old friends, each one eager to share humorous incidents and dreams with the other.
He had taken her advice about his name. His freedom-from-indenture papers, now duly recorded in the courthouse in Annapolis, read Robert Kincaid. She never called him that, of course. For her, he would always be simply Kincaid, and no matter how respectable he became in the future, she knew that he’d remain—in her mind—an adventuresome rogue.
For the past week, Bess had missed their evenings together. Kincaid had informed her that he was going away on business matters and that he would return by Saturday. This was Sunday morning. When Vernon had brought the horse and cart around to the door, he’d assured her that he’d seen Kincaid having breakfast with the timber crew. Bess assumed that he’d returned sometime in the night and had slept in the bachelor quarters rather than come into the manor house and risk waking her.
They slept in separate rooms. It was not by Bess’s choice. Married or not, she would have been willing to go on as they had begun. She missed him beside her at night, and she missed his lovemaking terribly. But so long as he remained stubborn, she had been determined not to beg him to return to her bed.
But today, when she’d awakened alone and lay curled around a pillow, feeling Kincaid’s child kick within her, she’d decided they’d played the game long enough. She had fretted over his absence and worried herself sleepless that he’d find a plantation for sale and not return to Fortune’s Gift at all. Today she would confront him and insist that he realize he’d been behaving like a spoiled child.
He loved her and she loved him. There was no reason that they shouldn’t marry and live happily ever after. Actually, she’d wrinkled her nose and laughed aloud over that. Happily, perhaps, but never peacefully. . . They were both too volatile to get by without arguing from time to time. . . and—she had to admit it—locking horns to see which one would get the better of the other.
And since she’d already decided to become a dutiful wife, Reverend Thomas’s sermon had been “preaching to the saved.” I consider Kincaid my husband anyway, Bess told herself. Hadn’t they pledged their love to each other and lived like a married couple? If they weren’t handfasted in the old custom, then who was? She’d never felt she was sinning in giving and taking Kincaid’s love. He was the only man for her, now and forever.
“In this world and the next. . .” she whispered to the dapple-gray horse. The animal flicked his ears, tossed his head, and quickened his trot.
Big trees, mostly oak, maple, and chestnut, stretched eastward from the river as far as Bess could see. A few charred stumps and piles of branches were scattered along the woods line. A team of spotted oxen blocked the road ahead. From the forest came the ring of steel against green timber.
“Gee-hah!” the driver called. The huge beasts threw their massive shoulders against the thick leather harness and moved an oak log along. “Mornin’, Miss Bess!” The workman touched his hat in greeting.
Bess waited until the oxen had dragged the log off the path, then flicked the reins again. The gelding trotted into the shadowy woods, and the sounds of chopping grew louder. A crash and the crack of breaking limbs came from her left. She slowed the dapple-gray to a walk and guided the cart past a pile of fresh-cut logs. Under the direction of a black man, another team of oxen was attempting to pull a fallen tree loose from the tangled underbrush.
“Mornin’, Miss Bess,” Big Moses said. He pointed with the tip of a bullwhip. “Mr. Kincaid’s back that way.”
“Thank you.” Bess remembered that Kincaid had told her last week that he’d hired Moses Walker and his team of oxen to help out with the lumbering for a few weeks. “How’s Sally and that fine boy of yours?”
“Right as rain, both of them. Sally says you call her when your time comes.”
Bess nodded her thanks. She halted the gelding, climbed down from the cart, and tied the horse to a tree. Then she picked her way carefully through the chips and branches in the direction Big Moses had pointed. She found a game trail and followed that through a stand of cedar and found Kincaid busy chopping down a tall, straight beech tree. A dark-haired man, his face in shandows, stood next to him with a broadax in his hand.
When Kincaid caught sight of Bess, he said something to his companion, handed over the ax he was using, and hurried toward her. “I didn’t look to see ye this early,” he said. He was stripped to the waist and grinning like a man who’d just won reprieve from the hangman.
“Good day to you, sir,” she said, stopping and waiting for him.
“Ye didn’t ride out here, did ye?” he asked.
“No, I did not. I brought the dog cart.” She smiled up at him. “Welcome home, Kincaid.”
He took her arm gallantly and escorted her, not back toward the woods lane, but off through the forest into a small clearing. Then he stopped, caught her around the waist, and lifted her up onto a broad, flat-cut stump. She sat there, skirts spread around her and legs dangling over the edge. The stump was high enough so that her eyes were on a level with his. “I missed you,” she said shyly. Now that she was face-to-face with him, it wasn’t so easy to say what she’d practiced in her mind.
“I thought ye might.” His features were immobile, giving no hint of what he was thinking. Only his nutmeg-brown eyes twinkled with mischief. “The crews dinna work so well when I’m nay here, do they, lass?”
“No,” she admitted, “they don’t. But that’s not why I missed you.” She nibbled at her bottom lip. Suddenly feeling a little dizzy, she steadied her balance with both hands. “This standoff has gone on entirely long enough,” she said. “Reverend Thomas came by this morning to tell me that we were a scandal on the Eastern Shore.”
“Fancy that.”
“Kincaid,” she chided, “I’m serious. You know you love me. And you know you don’t want to go away. You’ve been making excuses for weeks to stay here. We need to be properly married.”
“For the sake of our child.”
“No. For our sake. I’d never be happy without you.”
“Not even here?” he asked wryly. “On the fabled Fortune’s Gift?”
“Don’t tease me,” she said. “I’m serious.” She took a deep breath. “I was wrong about Peregrine Kay, and I’m sorry. I didn’t listen to you, and I got into trouble I couldn’t get myself out of. If you hadn’t saved me, I—”
“Is this an apology, woman?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Is it an apology or not?”
She lowered her head, then looked up at him with teary eyes. “It is, sir. Please,” she whispered. “Please, can we not try? I want to be a real wife to you, Kincaid. I want—”
“Aye.”
Her lips parted in astonishment. “What did you say?”
“Aye.”
“Aye, what? Aye, I was wrong about Peregrine? Aye, this is an apology, or—”
“Do ye never listen, woman?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what—”
He stopped her with a kiss. He encircled her with his arms and pulled her against him, kissing her so hard and for so long that she felt all giddy inside.
“Oh, Kincaid,” she cried when he let her up for air. “I do love you so.”
He laughed and gathered her up in his arms again. “That’s why ye make my life such a misery, is it?” He glanced back the way they had come. “David! It’s all right! Ye can come out now!”
“What?” Bess said. She squirmed in his arms, trying to see, but Kincaid blocked her line of vision by kissing her again.
“Put me down,” she insisted. “What are you—”
He swung her around and set her on her feet, supporting her with a strong arm. “I went to fetch your—”
“Father!” Bess cried in astonishment. She tore away from Kincaid and threw herself into David Bennett’s arms, almost—but not quite—failing to see the chestnut mare he was leading. “Father, is it really you?” She was laughing and crying all at the same time. She stepped back to look at him. He was thinner and older than she’d remembered. His Indian-black hair was streaked with gray, and his face more deeply lined, but he looked hale and hearty.
“It’s me, girl. I’ve come home, and my ship with me. But it was a near thing, I can tell you. We were aground on a hellhole off Java for months, and Chinese pirates—Well, there’ll be plenty of time for all that later. What’s important is that I’m home with a cargo of the finest silk and tea, and I’ve a contract with Song Lo for all the beaver pelts and tobacco I can carry.”
“You’re going back to the East again?” she said.
“Not until fall. I want to see this grandchild born. But first—” David Bennett fixed her with a stern gaze. “What’s this about not wanting to make the heir to Fortune’s Gift legitimate? Robert here says that you’ve lived with him as his common-law wife, and that now you’re dragging your feet about the marriage lines.”
Bess threw Kincaid a stabbing glance. “It was an honest difference of opinion, Father.” She smiled at her parent. “How did you two meet, and where is your ship?”
“My ship is in Annapolis being unloaded, and we ran into each other there. Your betrothed was fetching home Ginger and her colt, although why your mare was there in the first place, I—”
Bess whirled around and embraced the chestnut mare. “You found her!” she cried. “You brought her back to me.” The horse nickered and rubbed against her. “Good girl,” Bess crooned. “Good Ginger.”
“Aye, ’twas that or listen to your canting for the next forty years,” Kincaid remarked. “Do you know what this foolish horse cost me? Twice what she’s worth, not to mention the price I had to pay for her colt.”
“Colt? She has a colt? And I suppose it was fathered by a dish-footed workhorse,” she said, straining to see around the chestnut mare’s rump. A tiny red face appeared behind Ginger’s tail, all great dark eyes and white blaze beneath twitching ears. “Oh . . . ! He’s beautiful!” she said. “Does he have a name?”
“I thought to call him Scot’s Folly,” Kincaid replied.
“Folly,” she repeated, ignoring his sarcasm. “Little Folly.” She hugged the mare. “You’ve done well for yourself if that’s a woods colt,” she murmured.
“Woods colt, nothing,” Kincaid said. “I turned your mare in with a blooded stallion in a Chestertown paddock last spring.”
“Why did you do that?” Bess asked.
He shrugged. “I’d had a nip or two, and it seemed the thing to do, at the time.” He grinned at her. “Well, woman. Will ye nill ye? I’d say we’d best get to the house and have the reverend read over us from his Good Book.”
“Here? Now?”
“The sooner the better, I say,” her father put in. “From the looks of you, daughter, time for this wedding is fast running out.”
“But. . . but. . .” She looked from Kincaid to her father. “Reverend Thomas may not be there still,” she finished lamely.
“And since when has a minister come to Fortune’s Gift and not stayed for at least two meals?” David scoffed. “He’ll be there, girl. In fact, I sent Big Moses to make certain of it.”
“You two! You had this all planned out! You—” She stopped in mid-sentence as Kutii appeared at the edge of the clearing. “You,” she said.
“Would I stay away from my daughter’s wedding vows?” the Incan asked. He wore a feathered breastplate, gold armbands on each arm, and a kilt of gold disks that hung to his knees. He smiled at her. “I was right about Kincaid. Admit it, little one. I was right, as I am always right where matters of the heart are concerned.”
“You’re not always right,” Bess said.
“No,” Kincaid agreed. “I am not, but between us, lass, we are hard to beat.” He took her hand. “Come, Bess. I’d make ye mine, before ye go into labor and make our child as much a woods colt as your Folly.”
Bess glanced back at Kutii. “I’ll settle with you later,” she promised him.
But he merely laughed, fading until only his dark eyes glowed against the velvet shadows of the forest.
“Come, Bess,” Kincaid repeated, taking her hand in his. Together, they walked out of the forest and into the bright meadow, and into all the days of wonder that lay ahead of them.